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SSD & RAiD0

Howdy,

Working on a new build here, been watching these forums for a while and I fig'd its about time that I seek some of your expertise. I'm just starting to venture into the SSD realm. I'm thinking of doing a 2x 120 GB RAID0 setup. I have a lot of worries, lately I've been reading about blue screens and freezing and Windows 7 just hating them. Some were suggesting software RAID. Problem is I've only had 2x 150 RAPTORS on RAID before and that was using the motherboard's controller. Can you please shed some light on what is it that I need to be looking for?

although my experience level is not as great in the storage area as some that hang in here
I can give a safe referral in the Crucial M4 SSD drives and they will work well in conjunction with the Intel on motherboard controller ports
I've never up to this point had a problem with my os running raid0 arrays including a set of the 1 gen 34G raptors than these little laptop drives and W 7 x64
no trim support seems to not be a problem and the OS runs right between fresh installs(usually on @ 1 year rotation)with lots of writes to disk needed

Well honestly I'm just looking for the perfect compatibility with RAID0 and the best value per GB. I've taken a look at the Crucial, they look promising, but I want faster speeds and OCZ Vertex 3 seems to be my only choice atm. Though reviews have been quite misleading and erroneous.

Well, after having for almost 2 years a pair of Intel's G2 raid0 running on rampages II and IIIE without any problems, i changed for a MIVE raid0 with 2x m4 128GB. It runs flawlessly but although bench perf is almost 2x of the Intel's i can't feel any difference on normal PC utilization, as noted by others that SSDs bench perf does not reflect directly on normal utilization of pc's.
So i think stability and reliability should be the first concern and at the moment it seems the SF controller SSD family has problems, as reported by many and this was what made my decision on buying the m4 instead of Vertex 3 or Corsair F3.
But this is only my 2 cents… and also consider a very well informed opinion before mine…

Well, after having for almost 2 years a pair of Intel's G2 raid0 running on rampages II and IIIE without any problems, i changed for a MIVE raid0 with 2x m4 128GB. It runs flawlessly but although bench perf is almost 2x of the Intel's i can't feel any difference on normal PC utilization, as noted by others that SSDs bench perf does not reflect directly on normal utilization of pc's.
So i think stability and reliability should be the first concern and at the moment it seems the SF controller SSD family has problems, as reported by many and this was what made my decision on buying the m4 instead of Vertex 3 or Corsair F3.
But this is only my 2 cents… and also consider a very well informed opinion before mine…

That's because you goed from SSD to SSD !

The difference from HDD to SSD is amazing, but the later to another SSD dont give the WOW factor

Well, after having for almost 2 years a pair of Intel's G2 raid0 running on rampages II and IIIE without any problems, i changed for a MIVE raid0 with 2x m4 128GB. It runs flawlessly but although bench perf is almost 2x of the Intel's i can't feel any difference on normal PC utilization, as noted by others that SSDs bench perf does not reflect directly on normal utilization of pc's.
So i think stability and reliability should be the first concern and at the moment it seems the SF controller SSD family has problems, as reported by many and this was what made my decision on buying the m4 instead of Vertex 3 or Corsair F3.
But this is only my 2 cents… and also consider a very well informed opinion before mine…

Have to conclude the same thing. Ran my 80Gig G2's in Raid0 for roughly 21 months. Bought my 128Gig M4's and they have been wonderful in Raid0. Best part is finally they will do GC on the drives compared to the older Intel drives where it was loosing performance on me. My writes are 4x what they where before and reads are on slightly more but then again im still limited to my SATA II controller at this time. Reason for going with M4's, was hearing about the throttling issues with the Vertex series over time, as well price which was great. As well the C300 series preformed very well which is why I decided to jump on this one as it being the second gen SATA III controller for them.

Though me personally I felt much more speed on installs and saving large files due to the increased write speed that im getting once again, up from 40-60MB/sec to 300+, yup huge improvement!

Don't be afraid of SSD's, or SSD's in RAID0 for that matter. With proper diligence (you've obviously displayed said diligence here), you will choose drives that will not only last you, but provide you maximum speed with minimal issues. In my experience, the SandForce controllers exhibit more issues out of the gate than other controllers. Hundreds of SSD's deep, I've found that SF drives are fantastic after a few firmware revisions. I wouldn't jump into the SF-2200 quite yet if I was in your shoes, even though they post some impressive numbers.

I posted earlier today regarding a firmware update that Mushkin sent out for their new Chronos Deluxe drives. Of all the SF-2200 drives, I would choose theirs - but I wouldn't choose them yet. This is likely the same firmware OCZ has released, and I know Patriot and others will be releasing firmware soon. The dust needs to settle on this new controller before confidence will justify a purchase. In the meantime, the M4 will do you some solid numbers, and provide you with excellent reliability. That would be my vote, and I know others with a significant amount of experience in this matter will agree. or disagree and post even more wisdom explaining how to get around some of the known issues the industry hasl seen recently with the new SF-2200 controller.

In terms of configuration - it's a no brainer, really. If you are using an integrated controller, enable write back cache, configure with a 64KB strip size, and enjoy the speed! Trim (in my experience with Windows 7) is of no real benefit, nor have I seen signs of nose bleeding speed degradation. This, obviously, depends on the controller/drive you choose to run with however. Windows 7 will automatically take care of garbage collection, as well as disable SSD performance killing functions like disk-defrag.